Bowling v. Turner

Bryan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. C. A. Bowling made a demand of the proper Registration Officer that the name .of' Sydney E. Mudd should be stricken from the registries of voters. On refusal by the Registration Officer, Bowling took an appeal to the Circuit Court for Charles County, by filing a petition as required by the Act of Assembly. Sydney E. Mudd had been a voter in the Eighth Election District of Charles County since eighteen hundred and eighty-four.

In February, eighteen hundred and ninety-three he rented a furnished house by the month in Washington, (D. C.,) which he occupied with his wife and four children until May the first of the same year. Before he occupied the furnished house in Washington, ⁵⁹⁸ be had been occupying with his family a house in Bryan-town, Charles County, which he was renting by the month. He kept in the house at Bryantown all his furniture, and his spring and summer clothing, taking-with him to Washington his books, desk, officer chair, a cot and an old mattress for a colored servant, and a map. In February he opened an office in Washington for the practice of law, which he still rents, and in which his office furniture still remains.

He kept the key of the house at Bryantown, and employed a colored woman living in the neighborhood, to go to the house morning and evening to look around and see if everthing was right, and to feed the poultry. On May the first, eighteen hundred and ninety-three he returned to the house-in Bryantown, which he has occupied ever since. He has not at any time made the affidavit prescribed by the Act of 1890, chapter 578, section 14. The question of Mr. Mudd’s residence must be determined by his removal to Washington in point of fact, and by the intent with which the removal was made.

There is usually difficulty in ascertaining a man’s intentions. There has been some vagueness and latitude in the methods by which the Courts have permitted the question to be investigated. In Baptiste, et al. vs. De Volunbrun, 5 Harris & Johnson, 86, the defendant being a resident of Saint Domingo, fled from the servile insurrection in that island, and arrived in New York in seventeen hundred and ninety-seven, and after-wards removed to the City of Baltimore in eighteen hundred and two. The case was decided at June Term, 1820, after the defendant had lived eighteen years in the City of Baltimore.

The question was whether she had acquired a residence in Maryland. The Court said it is admitted that she (the defendant) “has constantly and uniformly declared her intention to return to her own country whenever circumstances will permit her to do ⁵⁹⁹ so with safety, and for that reason has never become a citizen either of this State, or any other of the United States. These declaration must be taken as a part of the res gesta, and are evidence of her intention, and with the fact that she has never become a citizen, are conclusive. She is a stranger in the country — an alien, without a fixed home — a sojourner wherever she goes, awaiting some favorable event, that may invite her back to the land from whence she has been driven.” In other cases a distinction has been drawn between a fixed intention and a floating intention.

The Legislature has seen fit to avoid the embarrassments and uncertainties attending the investigation of this question by making a change in the rule of evidence in the cases of persons applying for registration as voters. The fourteenth section of the Act of 1890, ch. 513, is as follows, so far as this question is concerned: “After the passage of this Act all persons who shall vacate and remove from the place of their actual domicile, abode, dwelling-place or habitation within this State, and shall take up a domicile, abode, dwelling-place or